"Attaboy Clarence!"

It's Christmas Eve! And here's the last of my "It's a Wonderful Life" characters! That silly little angel, Clarence Odbody.

I drew Clarence listening to hear a bell ring, which of course, signifies an angel getting their wings. In his hand is his copy of "Tom Sawyer." I'm not really sure why Clarence carries around a Tom Sawyer book, but I think it gives the character a nice touch. Maybe it helps show his innocence or something.

It's probably a first edition, which would be worth a lot of money for George Bailey. Then again, the little personal note Clarence scribbles on the front page probably lowers the value quite a bit. Wacky angels.

I hope anyone that has been checking this blog out for the past month has enjoyed my little depictions of these characters. Have a merry Christmas and I'll see you all next year!

"This is a Very Interesting Situation!"

And next from Frank Capra's holiday classic, "It's a Wonderful Life," is the main character whose life is the wonderful one which the title refers to... George Bailey!

There are several variations of George since the film depicts him throughout his entire life, but every time I think of the guy, this is the image that pops into my head first. It's from the scene where George is walking Mary home from the dance. The expression he has on his face while he harmlessly bullies Mary cracks me up every time. I'm not sure if I did it justice with this drawing or not.

One of the things I love about the movie is just how "realistic" the romance between George and Mary seems. I'm not saying anything new when I say that Jimmy Stewart is one of the greatest actors of all time, and his and Donna Reed's rapport is, (for me at least) the number one reason this movie is so good.

"Hello, Georgie."

Next in my lineup of favorite characters from "It's a Wonderful Life" is the lovely Violet Bick. Violet isn't a very big character in the film, but still an important one. George Bailey doesn't really do much that would directly affect Violet, and yet even her life is different without him. I think this shows how you can have a positive impact on someone's life just by generally being a good person.

As far as the drawing goes, I can't help but see how much room for improvement I have when it comes to drawing women. One of the goals in drawing these characters was to capture the recognizable traits of the actor in a "cartoony" style. However, the more I tried to make this look like actress Gloria Grahame, the more and more hideous she became. In other words, the LESS she looked like Gloria Grahame. While I like the final version, I think she comes across as a little too generic.

Hopefully, next week's character will be a different story.

"I'm All Right! I'm Aaaaaaaall Right!"

It's the craziest thing! There just isn't that much fan art for "It's a Wonderful Life!" Go figure.

This holiday classic is, I have to say, my favorite movie of all time! If you haven't seen it, then OMG, as the kids say, Netflix that badboy ASAP! Hopefully you'll love it as much as I do.

Since it is my favorite movie, and since the Christmas season is my favorite time of year, I thought I'd spend this month drawing some of my favorite characters from Mr. Capra's masterpiece.

First up is Uncle Billy. Played by the great Thomas Mitchell, Billy Bailey is the uncle of main character George, and although he's pretty scatterbrained, he's lovable and loyal to a fault. He also has a couple of strange pets that he lets live in his office. I thought it would be fun to have them in here as well, including Jimmy the Raven, which was actually a good luck charm for director Frank Capra, having appeared in several of his films.

I'm starting to sound like Robert Osborne now, so I guess I'll give it a rest. Come back next week for the next in the lineup.

Chamber of Secrets - Dobby

I guess most major franchises have their "Jar Jar Binks." You know what I'm talking about, that one annoying character that's just sort of there and could easily be left out. The Lord of the Rings has Pippin. Thundercats has Snarf. Star Wars has... well... Jar Jar Binks. For Harry Potter, in my opinion, it's Dobby. I'm sure some could argue that Dobby served a purpose of some kind, but I just seemed to wince every time he showed up.

Aunt Petunia's Pudding, on the other hand, I feel is the very core of the entire Harry Potter series. Don't ask me why.

Don't.

This is going to do it with the Harry Potter stuff for a while. I wanted to do something different for the holidays, but worry not! I'll have the rest of the Book Two gang after the New Year!

Chamber of Secrets - Hermione Granger

Ah... Miss Granger. I had a lot of fun drawing this one. Hermione's hair, in general, is fun to draw! Hermione as a cat... that's fun! Plus, since she's supposed to be disguising herself as Millicent Bulstrode, I got to color her robes with that cool Slytherin green. Again... Fun!

Chamber of Secrets - Ron Weasley

Continuing with the brilliant characters from J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," we have the one and only, Ronald Bilius Weasley!

This was a real fun one to draw, even though I had to have gone through about a million rough drafts. Albeit entertaining, drawing a person vomiting can be a little difficult. 

This is from the scene where Ron is hit with an aptly named Slug-Vomiting Charm, which (in my version at least) causes him to hork up very muppety looking slugs.

Hork... That's a fun word.

Hork.

H is for Halloween

I'll get back to the Harry Potter stuff next week.

This being the week of All Hallow's Eve, or Halloween to all you sellouts, I thought I'd share this piece I made for a friend of mine.

He's a school teacher collecting alphabet art for his classroom (A is for Aquaman etc.) and requested I make him one for Halloween. Here's what I came up with.

For the little trick-or-treaters, I decided to use some original characters that have been bouncing around in my head for a couple of years but never really made their way to paper. I'll introduce you to them as I develop them more later on.

Hopefully my friend liked this, as I hope you do too. Happy Halloween!

Chamber of Secrets - Harry Potter

At one point, I thought it would be fun to draw a bunch of characters from "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." The idea was to draw these, and then, after a year, I would draw characters from the next book in the Harry Potter series. Over time, I could look back at all of the Harry Potter characters and see how my drawings (hopefully) improved from year to year with the same characters.

I started this little "project" back in 2010, and here we are nearing the end of 2012... so I didn't exactly stay on target with the once a year idea. Surprise. But it's still something I think would be fun.

So finally, here's my take on the characters from "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets!" Heading up the lineup is, of course, the titular boy who lived, Harry.

I plan on doing 8 of these and then, like with Sorcerer's Stone, design disc labels for the audio book.

Stay tuned. More to come.

...Boober

Yep. :P

The Olympian Ideal

I am by NO MEANS a sports fan... and yet, I absolutely love the Olympics. I think it's mainly because each event (that I enjoy) only lasts a couple of minutes. Unlike mainstream sports, I am able to emotionally vest myself in an athlete's story, take a couple of minutes to watch them succeed or fail, and then say "Yay Olympics!" After about two weeks of this, I'm good... and will be for another four years.

Here's my boy, George... (not my Boy George) depicting the embodiment of the Olympic dream.

And Dooooooooon't You For-GET It!

I thought I'd do some more Hanna-Barbera characters in the same style as before. Here's the great Quick Draw McGraw with his faithful sidekick Baba Looey. Hanna-Barbera seemed to have some sort of thing for short and smart sidekicks.

Baba Looey & Quick Draw McGraw

The textures I used are all from cgtextures.com. They're completely free so check them out if that's your sort of thing.

Look Ma! A Fwaggle!!

There's not much to say about this one. It's Red Fraggle from "Fraggle Rock."

You're probably wondering why there's all that space to the right of her. Maybe there's supposed to be a giant Doozer tower there... or wise but sassy Trash Heap. Maybe it's a palette for an unexplored facet of your whimsical imagination. As for me, it's where my Desktop icons go.

Dance your cares away, kids.

The Cult Classic!

So just in case there's not already enough evidence on this blog of all the pointless things I like to do with my free time, this should do quite nicely. I grew up loving me some Disney Afternoon.

There's an episode of Chip n Dale's Rescue Rangers that has permenately lodged itself into my memory due to a catchy commercial jingle featured in the episode. It's titled "The Case of the Cola Cult" and features a group of mice that worship a soda-pop commercial. I thought it would be fun to design a poster for that soda. Here it is.



And in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's the scene from the episode that will probably be stuck in my head for the rest of time.

Obscure, right?!?

A Frog and his Banjo

Kermit the Frog is incredibly difficult to draw. At least for me, that is. Like most of the Muppets, most of their emotion comes from the performance of the puppeteers. When drawing a still form of the characters, I find you have to figure out what features of theirs you can change and exaggerate without taking away what makes them... THEM. I guess the same goes for drawing caricatures of real people as well.

With Kermit, it's his eyes. They give me the hardest time. You can't really change them in any way, or he ceases to look like Kermit. But when I draw them, he always comes across so stiff and lifeless. So I try to exaggerate the rest of him as much as I can.

I scribbled through several attempts until I made this one. It's not perfect, but I'm pretty pleased with it overall. And after the frustration of drawing him, it was a lot of fun to color.

Love Birds

Here is an exact depiction of my wife and I first meeting. This is precisely how it went down. No exaggerations... well, apart from the fact that we're not actually birds. We're humans. Also, we didn't so much meet on a small tree branch as we did... at our workplace.

On second thought... this is just a drawing of two birds. Nothing more.

So yeah. Enjoy the birds. I love my wife. Have a nice day.

And on a side note, thanks to everyone for all the awesome extra comments, likes, and watch-notificationings as of lately. I'm glad so many of you enjoy what you see. I'll be doing my best to keep your interest.

Happy Star Wars Day!

It's May the Fourth! The day we celebrate Jedi with speech impediments!

Here's a little quickie with one of the true masters of speech impediments, Sylvester, showing his support for that galaxy far, far away.

"Live long and proTHper, kidTH!" ...Yeah. Sylvester never was really up on his sci-fi jargon.

Penguin Suits - April O'Neil

Penguin Suits - Splinter

Penguin Suits - The Shredder

Penguin Suits - Raphael

Penguin Suits - Michelangelo

Penguin Suits - Donatello

Penguin Suits - Leonardo

Penguin Suits - Avatar Jake Sully

Penguin Suits - Dwight Schrute

Penguin Suits - Mr. Incredible

Penguin Suits - The Wicked Witch of the West

...or Elphaba, as she's known to all you fellow "Wicked" fans out there.

Penguin Suits - Henry Jones, Sr.

Penguin Suits - Indiana Jones

March of the Penguin Suits

Here we have another attempt of mine to put an original spin on fan art. A couple of years ago, I came up with this idea to have little generic penguins dressed as all sorts of different characters from pop culture (seen here, here, and here). I wasn't 100% happy with them but they were a lot of fun to do. And, rather than just drop the whole thing for being somewhat of a waste of time, I gave the little guys a revamp.

I thought it would be more fun if the penguins were a)more adorable and b)displayed a little more movement and emotion. This is what I finally came up with.
Looking back now, I can't help but notice a little too much of a similarity between this and Jeff Smith's "Bone" or Walt Kelly's "Pogo". The design must have been lingering around in my subconscious and escaped onto the page. In other words, I might have accidentally ripped them off somewhat. Hopefully, if I even decide to keep going with these, I'll slowly refine my design to be a little more original. But for now, it's just for my own fanboy sense of amusement.

That being said, I thought I'd see how many of these I could post in the next few days. Some new, some revamps of ones I already drew. And since "Penguin Suits" consists of penguins practicing the art of Cosplay, what better way to kick it off than with COS himself? Bill Cosby!


By the way, the Bill Cosby Dance (as I call it) is very difficult to draw.

One Hundred Posts!

Well. After rocking this blog for going on four years now, I'm finally making my 100th post. And although that means absolutely nothing, I thought I'd do a little something special.

Here below is the namesake, I guess, for my blog. My own Silly Nate and his best buddy, George. I've been drawing these guys since I was in the third grade.


At first, Nate was supposed to be me (hence the fact we share the same name) but as I grew up, he slowly developed into his own character. Plus, I look nothing like him.


George is based off a stuffed animal I had when I was little. It was a little blue parakeet with a yellow belly button. I don't know why a bird would have a belly button, but it did, and so George does.

When I was a kid, I would imagine having my own Disney-esque empire of entertainment, and these guys were my Mickey Mouse. To this day, I still like to draw Nate and George and over the years have always enjoyed giving them little updates here and there. Some of you may have even noticed them making an appearance on this blog once or twice.

And while they might lack the marketability of characters like Mickey Mouse, they'll always have a special place in my heart and I plan on drawing them for as long as I can.

Have a Heart Like Love-a-Lot

I liked "girl" cartoons before it was cool to like "girl" cartoons. I'm just saying, Bronies... Care Bears are way better than My Little Pony. I don't care HOW magic their friendship is!

And I'll even go as far to say that Cheer Bear could out shine Twilight Sparkle on her worst day! I'm talking gray skies, the Care-o-Meter is down to zero, and little baby Hugs is throwing a fit because her favorite star friend flew off to the Forest of Feelings to sing a song with Bright Heart Raccoon!

Oh! And don't even get me STARTED on Scootaloo!

So, yeah. I just needed to get that off my chest. Now that I have, I'll be going home to make out with my wife.

Happy Valentines Day!

What is a Murgatroyd?

Here's a few more lil' somethin-somethins to go with my Yogi Bear pic, including my personal favorite, Snagglepuss.

Enjoy.

Huckleberry Hound

Snagglepuss

Cindy Bear

BTW, does anyone remember Yogi's Ark? That is a prime example of just how lovably bizarre and random these Hanna-Barbera shows could get.

Life's a PIC-A-NIC!

A while back I tried a different kind of style drawing the Tiny Toons. Here I did pretty much the same thing, just slightly different. Instead of just coloring Yogi and friends, I used different textures found at the wonderful cgtextures.com and applied the right color effects in Photoshop.

I'm still mixed on how pleased I am with the result, but it was a fun change of pace.

Yogi Bear, Boo Boo & Ranger Smith

Incidentally, I need to point out just how much I love the Hanna-Barbera characters... or more specifically, how much I love their design. I may be wrong about this, but the way I understand it, character designer Ed Benedict had to create a look for the characters that was lovable and stylized, but also simple to allow for the cheap television animation. I think he found the perfect balance, and while there's definitely something to be said for intricate design and complex forms of animation, I can't think of anything more challenging than to simplify things to this type of level while keeping the sort of charm that connects with the audience.

I don't know whether or not Mr. Benedict was pleased with his Hanna-Barbera work, but I definitely tip my hat to the man.

The Hamburglar

How could I draw Ronald and Grimace and NOT draw Hamburglar?

As it turns out, my interpretation of the Burger Bandit is really just a combination of Robin, Darkwing Duck and Montana Max. Each of which a perfectly fine source of inspiration.

Grimace

When redesigning Grimace, the goal was to find a balance between lovable and absolutely repulsive.

And by the way, what is Grimace supposed to be?!? Does anyone know?

Ronald

Just for fun, I decided to put my own spin on Ronald McDonald.
Why doesn't McDonald's use Ronald and friends as much anymore? Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but I think there's something fun and uniquely timeless about them. Oh well. C'est la vie.

The Social NATE-work! HAAA!

Happy New Year everyone!

I thought I'd kick off 2012 by joining the masses with my own Facebook fan page. Therefore, this is a formal invitation for anyone interested in enriching their Silly Nate experience to head on over to Mr. Zuckerberg's quaint little corner of the internet and click my "Like" button. You can do so by clicking here.

In addition to keeping everyone up to speed on my random bloggings, I'll also be posting my rough sketches and so-called doodles, as well as links to other artists works that I consider to be Neato.
And since I don't really have a drawing related to this in any way, here instead, is Silly Nate's Ginormous Head with the Disney starburst treatment.

So here's to great new year! Hopefully one where I cease use of the words 'neato' and 'ginormous'.